The singer briefly lost the tiny pet weeks after receiving it for her 24th birthday in December.

Billie Eilish recalls pet hamster, Tomato Bisque Soup, being trapped in bedroom wall for 4 days

The singer briefly lost the tiny pet weeks after receiving it for her 24th birthday in December.

By Kathleen Perricone

May 5, 2026 8:23 p.m. ET

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Billie Eilish on 'Good Hang With Amy Poehler' podcast. Credit:

Good Hang with Amy Poehler

- Billie Eilish recalls the saga of losing her pet hamster, named Tomato Bisque Soup, in the walls of her bedroom closet for four days.

- The animal-loving singer got the dwarf hamster for her 24th birthday in December.

- Eilish has since gone to great lengths to ensure Tomato never escapes again.

Billie Eilish’s pet hamster really knows how to make her cry.

For her 24th birthday in December, the animal-loving singer received a four-legged gift, a dwarf hamster she affectionately named Tomato Bisque Soup, or Tomato for short. “She was a rescue from a hoarder house that had 60 loose free-roaming hamsters everywhere being just in s--- and stuff,” Eilish revealed on the most recent episode of *Good Hang With Amy Poehler*. “She is so goddamn cute.”

Despite her tiny stature (adult dwarf hamsters weigh a fraction of a pound), Tomato possesses an enormous desire for mischief. “She’s wild,” the singer said. “Tomato’s wild little freaky self.”

After less than a month of living a peaceful existence in the “hamster mansion” that Eilish furnished with a wheel and enrichment activities, somehow, Tomato escaped from the cage’s hamster-sized air vent.

“I went on a little trip and I had put her seeds out,” the singer recalled to Poehler. “And then I came home many days later and the pumpkin seeds were still there… I just thought, ‘Oh, she’s dug herself into a cute little tunnel. She’s sleeping.’”

But then four days went by with no Tomato sightings.

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Eilish decided to double check the hamster was still in her mansion, even though it seemed impossible for her to be anywhere else, as the house was situated on a shelf five feet off the ground in her bedroom closet.

After taking everything out of the enclosure, there was still no sign of Tomato.

“The night that she was gone, I’m texting all my friends, like, ‘She's gone. RIP. Love her so much,” Eilish recounted to Poehler. “One month of having a hamster and I already lost her into the walls. Like, what the hell?”

Billie Eilish shows Amy Poehler a video of Tomato the hamster.

Good Hang with Amy Poehler

In a last-ditch effort, she set out Tomato’s wheel and her favorite pumpkin seeds, “and like maybe a miracle will happen and she’ll appear.” The next morning, after laying in bed beating herself up for “failing” the hamster, Eilish checked, and sure enough, the pumpkin seeds were gone.

But was it Tomato? The singer put out more of the pet’s favorite snack and called her in the “voice that she always comes out to.”

Within moments, “she f---ing crawls out of the wall,” Eilish exclaimed. “And she’s like, ‘What up, bitch?’ She had been living in the walls of the closet for four days with no food and no water, waiting for me to f---ing look for her.”

Billie Eilish and her dog Shark.

Good Hang with Amy Poehler

To ensure the little escape artist doesn’t try it again, “I have gotten her a much bigger house with very thin venting,” Eilish said.

Tomato isn’t the first celebrity pet to make a break for it.

Zoë Kravitz shared a similar story about her mother Lisa Bonet’s snake, Orpheus, who got loose in a most peculiar place: Taylor Swift’s bathroom.

As the actress explained on *Late Night With Seth Meyers*, she had been staying at the singer’s home for two weeks after being displaced by the Los Angeles fires last January. On the last day, as she tidied up, Bonet summoned her to the bathroom, where Orpheus "found this little hole in the corner" and disappeared.

After lots of panicking, they called the manager of the house, who reluctantly started tearing up the room with a crowbar.

"We're ripping up the tile. We're scratching the walls," Kravitz recalled. "And there was just this moment where I was like, 'Either we destroy her bathroom, or I have to tell her that there's a snake somewhere in her house.'"

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Orpheus was recovered and Kravitz paid for the damage caused. She begged the house manager not to tell Swift until everything was fixed, however, she didn't get her wish.

"I remember calling her and saying, 'Hey!' — also [in a] very high voice — I wanted to talk to you about something," Kravitz recounted. "And she was like, 'Is it the fact that you almost lost a snake in my house and destroyed my bathroom?'"

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